Dead cat fails to bounce for Darling

Alistair Darling could discuss the Apocalypse in the same tone of voice as a 5p rise on a packet of cigarettes. I suppose the unruffled tone is meant to have a calming effect. But the trouble with the chancellor's reassuring manner is that it doesn't actually reassure anyone.

In the real world the stock market, which had been sliding all day like a luge team at the Winter Olympics, rose a little when he began speaking.

This is what we call a dead cat bounce.

Then when he finished, the cat decided it was dead after all, and dropped straight back down again.

In truth Mr Darling told us very little. He would not discuss "specifics".

He would do "whatever is necessary". He had a responsibility. It was essential to take action. Options would be considered. Committees would deliberate. He recounted the steps he had taken before disaster turned into calamity.

At one point he said, "there are a number of specific steps that are necessary".

Aha! Specific steps! This sounded like a man with a plan. It wasn't.

"The Bank of England will continue to do whatever it takes," he told us.

As so often when disaster strikes, this government leaps into action and begins an energetic programme of dithering.

At least Mr Darling realises that this is not going to be easy. "I am in no doubt as to the size of the task facing us," he said. "[But] providing a running commentary could add uncertainty in already febrile market conditions."

That's his secret - he is going to increase our confidence by not telling us what he is up to, fearing that if he did, yesterday's panic might be replaced by bottomless dread.

Mr Darling stood ready. He would keep us informed. He commended his statement. It was a grim moment.

The truce between government and opposition lasted for about one minute after George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, stood up.

The opposition would give its support to the government in its time of need. But it would not suspend its critical faculties. "Boom has turned to bust, and bust must not turn to something worse. That is why the Conservatives stand ready to help," he said.

Help you get out of the mess you created is, I assumed what he meant.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, was as ever the clearest and the glummest of all main speakers.

Those who imagined that the problems in banking had no relevance to ordinary lives "urgently need a line of communication to planet earth".

The most startling remark came from the Rev Ian Paisley.

The ancient turtle raised himself on his flippers and boomed as if from a cavern at the bottom of the sea.

"I trust the whole nation will turn in repentance and cry to God for an intervention so that calamity will not come on our children and on the babes in their cots," he said.

Never know. It might just work.

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